Churches are a lot like windmills.
Bear with me.
When the wind is blowing full-force, a well-built windmill can serve about a dozen purposes: from churning out electricity to milling grain to pumping out groundwater. Likewise, when a church has a steady flow of donations, it can better serve the community.
Sadly, when the wind doesn’t blow (or the donations quit coming in), windmills and churches alike fail to perform as well as they might.
That’s why it’s especially important to keep your church churning each Sunday with these five tactics.
Here are the top five ways to raise more money during your church’s Sunday service!
1. Hop Aboard the Mobile App Train
As far as mobile apps go, Facebook is one of the top ones. While it’s a great tool for engaging with your congregation and enticing new members, Facebook is not the be-all, end-all of mobile apps for churches.
Churches all across the nation are creating their own unique mobile apps. These apps can serve as resource hubs for church members who may miss a sermon or two. For example, they can download podcast versions of Sunday’s sermon.
Mobile apps can also be fantastic fundraising tools.
As long as you keep your momentum up, a mobile app for your church can boost your congregation’s tithing on Sunday. More often than not, people forget their checkbooks at home. Rarely do they forget their phones, though.
Promotion of your church’s mobile app is key. It only takes a few moments during the sermon or homily to make a plug for your app and explain its major features (such as donation buttons, downloadable sermons, weekly inspirational psalms, etc.).
If your members know that giving to the church is a viable option on your app, they will be much more likely to donate through that giving avenue.
Now is the perfect time to get started with your church’s very own mobile app.
2. Offer Text-to-Tithe
When was the last time you brought your smartphone to church? Chances are, you brought it with you the last time you attended church.
The same is true of the average churchgoer. The average churchgoer is more likely to have their smartphone in their back pocket than have a checkbook or cash handy. .
As such, offering text-to-tithe as an alternative to the traditional collection plate is one of the top ways to engage donors and raise more money on any given Sunday..
Text-to-tithe and text-to-give technologies have been shown to be marvelous investments for churches and nonprofits alike.
While there are startup costs to launching a text-to-give campaign for your church, the return-on-investment is hard to beat. Text-to-tithe is truly one of the best options for any church looking to increase their weekly donations.
Text-to-tithe is easy, safe, and accessible for all. It’s certainly worth looking into!
3. Create a Mobile-Friendly Donation Page
Asking for donations, whether you’re a church or a nonprofit, can be tough. You can make it easier for yourself and for your donors by creating a mobile-friendly donation page specifically for your church.
There are so many examples of great donation pages out there.
To have a truly successful mobile-friendly donation page, you’ll need:
- A website and donation page that function as well on mobile devices (cell phones and tablets) as they do on laptops and desktops.
- A fully customized, branded page that matches your church’s mobile website.
- A clearly marked “Donate” button, preferably in a bright color like red or orange.
- Only the most necessary fields for your donors to fill in (name, phone, email, etc.).
Just like you have to promote your mobile app to get it to work for you, you must also promote your mobile-friendly donation page to get your church members to use it.
The easier your mobile donation page is to find and use, the more people will stumble upon it and choose to use it.
4. Seek Major Gifts Wisely
Another great way to raise more money on Sunday is through seeking major gifts.
Time and time again, studies have found that 88% of any nonprofit or faith-based organization’s donations come from 12% of its donors. It’s generally called the 90/10 or 80/20 split, even though it’s really somewhere in between.
Of course, not every church can afford to have a major gifts officer in place to handle all things major gifts-related. But that doesn’t mean that those churches shouldn’t have a strategy for pursuing major gifts!
A sure-fire way to increase Sunday tithing is to build strong, healthy relationships with your church’s regular donors. As the experts say, “The greatest indicator of future giving is past giving.”
If your church has a solid major gifts strategy in mind, it will increase the chances that you will attract the churchgoers who are apt to give in a major way.
5. Host a Church-wide Fundraiser During Your Service
Of course, you know that hosting a fundraiser is an almost guaranteed way to raise money for your church.
But an even better way to raise more money is by hosting a fundraiser during or right after your weekly church service.
Obviously, this is a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of event, but throwing a unique fundraiser during church can elicit an overwhelmingly positive response in your congregation.
There are several reasons why hosting a fundraiser in the middle of church is actually a grand idea. They include, but aren’t limited to:
- There are guaranteed attendees. Likely your entire congregation!
- You don’t need to book an event space. Your church’s atrium will do just fine.
- You can create a family-fun event, and it won’t even feel like fundraising. Carnivals are always an exciting choice.
- Breaking the normal routine will get your churchgoers out of theirs. And they’ll be far more likely to tithe (and not even feel like they’re making a sacrifice).
Whether you choose to host the event during a service or directly after, your members are sure to love the chance to let loose and celebrate a random Sunday with one another.
For more church fundraising ideas, check out this great list.
Conclusion
Now that you have these five new ways to raise more money on Sunday morning, you can get out there and get the people tithing! From mobile apps to text-to-tithe, your church should have enough wind in its mill to keep the grain turning and the power churning.
What tips did I leave off? Let me know in the comments!
The post Bigger Tithes: 5 Ways to Raise More Money During Church appeared first on Capterra Blog.